Thursday, November 3, 2016

I have about 150 pages of this comic penciled in my notebook. Since I'm posting at least once or twice a week, I have months of buffer. Furthermore, I roll up fight scenes when I have the time, and write out scenes and conversations between characters as I think of them. Therefore I have an additional 200+ pages of script in a binder waiting to be drawn, which by my estimation would lead up to about 500 more pages of art at least. The characters are still at the Caves of Chaos, have completely disrupted the region, destabilized the politics of the Keep, wiped out a few caves, picked up new party members, and several PCs have died.

That's right. Died.

D&D characters die all the time. I'm being honest in my combat rolls and sometimes a string of ones doom the whole party. It's hard to get a party out of the level one doldrums. The part that makes me ache is I have to draw these guys for years still, knowing the future and knowing that in that future, several of these guys will be dead. It's a little rough to do. I have future plans for all the characters and when one kicks, it takes time for me to adjust the story to accommodate. How are the party's alliances changed? Who bails? Who sticks around? How do the deaths of companions effect the desires of the survivors? Do they get bitter? Is their resolve strengthened? Anyway, it's going to be interesting to see what happens if readers fall in love with these guys like I have, and then see what they do when the characters get killed in an anticlimactic fashion in the middle of a dungeon. I'm not going to say who kicks until it happens, just know.. no character is safe.